UPDATE ELECTION 2010 : COUNTING THE VOTES AND ANALYZING THE RESULTS..........

As Midterm Election Day 2010 draws to a end and the votes continue to be counted, the outcome is definitively, a Republican, Tea Party, victory of a wave proportion.  Winning a projected 65 seats in the United States House of Representatives in the Congress; 5 seats in the United States Senate; 2 Governorships, in States of the Union; the neophyte Tea Party has succeeded in causing a major redirect in the leadership of the USA, in the third consecutive vote for change in our federal political and governmental processes.  Some pundits, analysts, and historians, have for a number of months been referring to the expected outcome materializing tonight, as a transforming, wave election.  And by the number of seat changes in the House, that included the defeat of several senior Democratic House members and Committee chairmen, it does rank with the 1994, 1986, 1974, 1966, 1954, and 1946, midterm elections.  Surprsingly, in perhaps one of the most watched US Senate races of 2010, in Nevada, four term Democratic incumbent and Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid was able to withstand the hard hitting challenge of Tea Party, Republican candidate Sharron Angle, who was thought to likely vanquish Reid, and did not.  And then there's the outcome here in California in the US Senate and Governor's races, that went against the wave election outcome.  Breaking into the rarified circle of Hiram Johnson and Alan Cranston, the only other two US Senators from California to be elected to a fourth term, Boxer turned back the strong challenge of former Hewlett Packard CEO, Carly Fiorina; and former two term Governor Jerry Brown overcame the $141 million plus self funding of former E-Bay CEO Meg Whitman, to be returned to the California Statehouse in January 2011, at 72, twice the age he was when elected to his first term as Governor in 1974.  At the national level - as Congress will now be split with Republicans having a two dozen plus membership majority in the House and Democrats maintaining a narrow majority in the Senate, will the two parties and chambers of Congress be able to govern productively with each other and President Obama, or will the vitriol of the campaign season now over, and the 2012 presidential sweepstakes waiting to break open almost immediately, lead to stalemate  and intransigence ?  And what dimensions to governance will the freshman members, especially Tea Party Representatives and Senators, bring to the equation, with their enunciated principle of not compromising ?  The next two years are a crucible that will either affirm the desires of the American people, or possibly lead to yet another change election, whatever the definition of change really is.  Good government in the national interest is about  the ability to work together in a manner of principled governance serving the common good of all Americans; not partisan gridlock that is self serving and stalls sound decisions on the major issues confronting the USA and the World.
Coming days and the efforts of the new Congress and the Obama White House, will set the blueprint for governance or gridlock, yet to be written.  Please God, positive and productive responses and decisions that serve the common good of our nation, and not just political polarization will result.....To Be Continued..........God Bless America,   Fr.  Troy